he loved best of all was his villa at
Tusculum, a Latin town lying on the slope of Mount Algidus, at such a
height above the sea[4] as would make a notable hill in England. Here
had lived in an earlier generation Crassus, the orator after whose model
the young Cicero had formed his own eloquence; and Catulus, who shared
with Marius the glory of saving Rome from the barbarians; and Caesar, an
elder kinsman of the Dictator. Cicero's own house had belonged to
Sulla, and its walls were adorned with frescoes of that great soldier's
victories. For neighbors he had the wealthy Lucullus, and the still more
wealthy Crassus, one of the three who ruled Rome when it could no longer
rule itself, and, for a time at least, Quintus, his brother. "This," he
writes to his friend Atticus, "is the one spot in which I can get some
rest from all my toils and troubles."

[Footnote 4: 2200 feet.]

Though Cicero often speaks of this house of his, he nowhere describes
its general arrangements. We shall probably be not far wrong if we
borrow our idea of this from the letter in which the younger Pliny tells
a friend about one of his own country seats.

"The courtyard in front is plain without being mean. From this you pass
into a small but cheerful space inclosed by colonnades in the shape of
the letter D. Between these there is a passage into an inner covered
court, and out of this again into a handsome hall, which has on every
side folding doors or windows equally large. On the left hand of this
hall lies a large drawing-room, and beyond that a second of a smaller
size, which has one window to the rising and another to the setting sun.
Adjoining this is another room of a semicircular shape, the windows of
which are so arranged as to get the sun all through the day: in the
walls are bookcases containing a collection of authors who cannot be
read too often. Out of this is a bedroom which can be warmed with hot
air. The rest of this side of the house is appropriated to the use of
the slaves and freedmen; yet most of the rooms are good enough to put my
guests into. In the opposite wing is a most elegant bedroom, another
which can be used both as bedroom and sitting-room, and a third which
has an ante-room of its own, and is so high as to be cool in summer, and
with walls so thick that it is warm in winter. Then comes the bath with
its cooling room, its hot room, and its dressing chamber. And not far
from this again the tennis court, which gets the